I have memories. Specifically I have a memory of Dick Cheney debating John Edwards in the 2004 election. The debate was, compared to what we have now become accustomed to, a model of decorum. Both men spoke in an articulate, informed, intelligent and mostly polite style; each for example waited for the other to finish before speaking and there was no shouting.
Edwards wasn’t a shouter; Cheney didn’t need to shout. While his voice formed civil, considered words, his sulphuric eyes, antediluvian forehead and most of all his preternatural jaw expressed…a deep, highly sublimated desire to tear and rend. He was terrifying. He was substantial. Next to him, Edwards’ face and body expressed mostly superficial smarts and blitheness; he was like a spaniel gamboling around a restrained pitbull without the sense to be afraid.
Edwards said many things that I agreed with, particularly about Iraq. I voted for him and Kerry in fact; I never would’ve voted the other way. But what I remember about this debate was what Cheney said, not with his words, but under them. This is what I heard:
I am a very fierce dog. I am loyal to the home. The worthless animal you see sitting across from me is the kind of dog that, when the home is invaded by dangerous men, would run in circles barking while the intruders pillaged and raped. In truth the man at the head of the ticket on which I run is the the kind of dog that would, under those circumstances, hide under the couch and piss himself. All the more reason that you need me. Because what I would do is fight to the death to protect you and the home—and I do not think it would be my death. I would tear the intruders to pieces, I would eat their arms and legs, I would eat their heads if I was allowed.
Towards the end of the debate there was a moment of detente (at 57.23) when Edwards made a remark about the Cheney family’s acceptance of and love for their daughter Mary, who is gay. (It was relevant because of the discussion of gay marriage, whether or not it should be allowed.) Cheney’s verbal response was mild and polite. But this is what I heard:
Like any fierce, loyal dog I am of course especially loyal to my family. My family is what I love, the only thing I love. The home is to protect the family and I am to protect the home. If you are outside the home I don’t care about you. Leave us alone, I leave you alone. Mess with us, I tear off your limbs.
There was an element of theater to the presentation, for me even a dash of comedy and childhood romance; a bit of the paranoid Captain Hook, Hook as the shadow side of Mr. Darling, the ineffectual father of the fly-away children. There was also something genuinely tragic in it; that pure animality linked with and in the service of human mendacity, greed and indifference to suffering. I was moved by Cheney’s “dogness,” because I felt it showed a nature that was deep and absolute—passionate, I thought at the time. I remember thinking that he had decided long ago that the world was a terrible place, and that the only thing to do was protect those you love and screw everyone else. I remember thinking there was real despair in it. In that picture above, the one with his special snarl; if you look you can see the desolation in his eyes, especially the left one.
Eighteen years later, you can see it even more clearly, and there is no longer a snarl to provide a cover of menace.
He is much weakened: his stark, staring eyes have lost their sulphur, and his once terrible forehead is covered by an absurd hat that suggests vulnerability. As many people have pointed out, it’s gross hypocrisy for him, who so bluntly lied about weapons of mass destruction (“I know it, he knows it and, deep down, I think most Republicans know it”) to call It a liar. The moral posturing by a former torture advocate backgrounded by sappy music is hard to stomach on any sane level. But the video is affecting anyway. Because it shows him keeping a wordless promise to a moral value he believes in and has in common with almost everyone else: old and almost toothless, he’s still defending the home. Affecting but also sad. Because it’s too late. It was too late a long time ago.
This was beautifully written and poignant. I think that those of us on the left would do well to ground our passions in the body, in the context of those we love and fight for, as the starting gate for the bigger, broader visions we have for society.
I think our positions, while of benefit to the vast majority, often slide down the wall like those old sticky toys. I know I’ve been very guilty of this myself: I tend to speak in lofty abstraction, but who gravitates to “lofty abstract” ideas over a loyal dog? For me (and I observe this elsewhere), there’s a lot of academic training that must be unlearned (but keeping the deeper lessons of the humanities.)
I know it wasn’t really your point, but I think if we can connect more to that “dog energy,” our sincerity will be better heard and felt by those still on this side of sanity.
I just saw the film “Vice” and I think it was actually very fair to Dick. That “Loyal guard dog” nature is what had endured him so well to the people of Wyoming for so long, an “Old West Sheriff” or “Hanging Judge” Zero Nonsense kind of attitude. What took them 40 years to realize had gone wrong with him, from the majority Wyomingite perspective, is that he was overall trained in the WRONG way by Donald Rumsfeld. They do want a fiercely loyal guard dog, but one that doesn’t always try to kill ALL remotely POSSIBLE assailants, as in jumping the fence and running down every pedestrian who happens to be walking, minding his own business, nearby. It took awhile, but various landscaping projects revealed the bones of these victims and it’s just too much. He is the correct kind of dog, from the Wyomingite perspective, ABSOLUTELY the wrong trainer, a damned lunatic, as far as they now realized with too long delayed horror.
“Vice” summed up what’s wrong with the Neoconservative movement from the more nuanced traditional conservative perspective with this scene: “Young Dick asks Rumsfeld, with deep philosophical sincerity, “WHAT is it that we believe?”, to which that insufferable poisoner responded “Hahahahah!”, as if such an important question was the silliest joke he’d ever asked.
That’s when the dog trainer threw the guard dog puppy the entrails of a child he had murdered, getting him used to eating innocent blood, because he’s a total, homicidal psycho.
PS
I hope, if a proper dramatization of the Monsanto story is ever made, that Steve Correll can play Donald Rumsfeld again.